Log24

Saturday, January 21, 2012

The Oxford Murders

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:09 am

 (Continued)

Blame It on Trajan

Wikipedia on the 2008 film The Oxford Murders

IMAGE- Tall column of images from Log24, headed by permutahedron pictures

Christmas Eve image search
suggested by Stevens's phrase
"diamond globe."

(Larger version: 2 MB)

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Chess Problem…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:15 pm

… de la Iglesia

See Jan. 16-18, 2008, on poetry in Spanish
and the death of chess champion Bobby Fischer.

Note also yesterday evening's post and the date
Jan. 18, 2008, in the following Google search sidebar:

The film of The Oxford Murders  was first released on Jan. 18,
2008, in Spain. Its premiere was in Madrid on the preceding day,
which was also the day of Bobby Fischer's death.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Scenes from…

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:00 am

An Epic for Drink Boy —

Context:  The post in which the above scenes occur.

Gone

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 am

Update of 12:25 AM — See, too, The Oxford Murders.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Black Hole Revisited

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Backstory: The two previous Log24 posts
Raiders of the Lost Aleph (May 14) and
The Crying of Bucharest (May 15).

The following sequence of images was suggested by
Peter Woit's May 16 post "One Ring to Rule Them All."

Also from Devil's Night 2008:

From the May 16 Nobel Symposium talk discussed in
Woit's "One Ring to Rule Them All":

Related material:

All Souls' Day at the Still Point (Nov. 2, 2003) and

Frodo and the Oxford Murders (Oct. 13, 2011).

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Discouraging Words

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:01 pm

A quote from The Oxford Murders , 
a novel by Guillermo Martinez

"Anyone can follow the path once it’s been marked out.
But there is of course an earlier moment of illumination, 
what you called the knight’s move. Only a few people, 
sometimes only one person in many centuries, 
manage to see the correct first step in the darkness.”

“A good try,” said Seldom.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Logos

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:28 am

Click logos for related persons.

IMAGE- Logo of St. Peter's College, Oxford

IMAGE- Logo of St. John's College, Oxford

Some related news.

Background from this journal—

Collegiality, That Hideous Strength , and The Oxford Murders .

See also…

"The heart of the book is the conveying of a meaningful understanding
of where mathematical results originated…."

Saturday, October 8, 2011

For Whom the Bell

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 pm

In memory of "Mr. Piano" Roger Williams, who died today

Flashback:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110320-OmegaHaiku.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110320-TempleBellHaiku.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110313-BellOnGauss.jpg

Related material— A quote from The Oxford Murders ,
a novel by Guillermo Martinez

"Anyone can follow the path once it’s been marked out.
But there is of course an earlier moment of illumination,
what you called the knight’s move. Only a few people,
sometimes only one person in many centuries,
manage to see the correct first step in the darkness.”

“A good try,” said Seldom.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Step

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Flight from Ennui

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Post 2310 in yesterday evening’s Short Story links to two posts
from 2006 inspired by Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy—

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Ennui

May there be an ennui
of the first idea?
What else, prodigious scholar,
should there be?

— Wallace Stevens,
“Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”

Related material: The Line.

7:13 PM

Order and Ennui

Meanwhile, back at the Institute
for Advanced Study:

May 25, 4:40 PM —
Research Seminar
(Simonyi Hall Seminar Room) —
Pirita Paajanen,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
Zeta functions of
finitely generated infinite groups

Some background cited by Paajanen:

M.P.F. du Sautoy,
“Zeta functions of groups:
The quest for order
versus the flight from ennui,”
Groups St Andrews 2001 in Oxford ,
Volume 1, CUP 2003.

Those who prefer the showbiz
approach to mathematics
(the flight from ennui?) may
enjoy a website giving
further background from du Sautoy.

4:40 PM

The first paragraph of
Zeta Functions of Groups: The Quest for Order
Versus the Flight from Ennui
,” by Marcus du Sautoy,
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford—

“Mathematics is about the search for patterns,
to see order where others see chaos. We are very lucky
to find ourselves studying a subject which is neither so rigid
that the patterns are easy, yet not too complicated
lest our brains fail to master its complexities.
John Cawelti sums up this interplay perfectly in a book*
not about mathematics but about mystery and romance:
‘if we seek order and security, the result is likely to be
boredom and sameness. But rejecting order for the sake
of change and novelty brings danger and uncertainty…
the history of culture can be interpreted as a dynamic
tension between these two basic impulses…
between the quest for order and the flight from ennui.”’

* John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance:
Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture 
,
University of Chicago Press, 1976.

[Cawelti cites as his souce on interpreting “the history
of culture” Harry Berger, Jr., “Naive Consciousness and
Culture Change: An Essay in Historical Structuralism
,”
Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association ,
Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 1973): page 35.]

Here du Sautoy paints mathematicians as seekers of order,
apparently not realizing that the author he approvingly quotes
states that seekers of order face the danger of boredom.

Another danger to seekers
of order is, of course, seeing
order where there is none.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111129-AdventureMysteryAndRomance.jpg

Are you the butterfly?

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Mathematics and Narrative, continued

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 am

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111013-FrodoAndRing.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111013-OxfordMurdersPoster-300w.jpg

"I've got a little story you oughta know…."

Saturday, October 8, 2011

An Ordinary Evening in Hartford

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:59 am

From Rebecca Goldstein's Talks and Appearances page—

• "36 (Bad) Arguments for the Existence of God,"
   Annual Meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation,
   Marriot, Hartford, CT, Oct 7 [2011], 7 PM

From Wallace Stevens—

"Reality is the beginning not the end,
Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega,
of dense investiture, with luminous vassals."

— “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” VI

For those who prefer greater depth on Yom Kippur, yesterday's cinematic link suggests…

"Yo sé de un laberinto griego que es una línea única, recta."
 —Borges, "La Muerte y la Brújula " ("Death and the Compass")

See also Alpha and Omega (Sept. 18, 2011) and some context from 1931.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Enigma Variations

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 pm

For Yom Kippur

1. New York Lottery

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111007-AlmeidaInscape.jpg

2. Image— Almeida and Inscape

3. Against the Day , page 453

Rebecca Goldstein and a Cullinane quaternion

4. Image— Argument for the Existence of Rebecca

Some literary and cinematic background—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110114-AlderTilleyColored.gif


"Are you the butterfly… ?"

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